A Navy SEAL, medical physician and NASA astronaut lifted off for an eight-month mission on the Worldwide Area Station — and that was simply one of many three crewmembers on the journey into Earth orbit.
Jonny Kim of the USA, along with Russia’s Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky, launched on Tuesday (April 8) because the Soyuz MS-27 crew. Using atop a Soyuz 2.1a rocket, they ascended from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 1:47 a.m. EDT (0547 GMT or 10:47 a.m. native time).
“I’m so proud and excited,” stated Kim on the crew’s pre-launch press convention on Monday (April 7). “We have now come collectively, in opposition to all odds, and labored to [depart] on this journey.”
Following a two-orbit rendezvous, Soyuz MS-27 is predicted to autonomously dock with the station’s Prichal node at about 5:04 a.m. EDT (0904 GMT) on Tuesday.
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As soon as the hatches are open, Ryzhikov, Zubritsky and Kim will be a part of the Expedition 72 crew, led by cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin because the station’s commander, together with flight engineers Kirill Peskov and Ivan Vagner of the Russian house company Roscosmos; NASA astronauts Nichole Ayers, Anne McClain and Don Pettit; and Takuya Onishi with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Company (JAXA).
Ryzhikov, Zubritsky and Kim, along with Ayers, McClain, Peskov and Onishi, will then kind the Expedition 73 crew with Onishi in command, when Ovchinin, Vagner and Pettit return to Earth April 19 on board Soyuz MS-26.
Throughout their time in house collectively, Ryzhikov, Zubritsky and Kim will assist oversee the arrival and departure of visiting cargo autos, help within the maintenance of the station’s methods and participate in a whole lot of experiments. They might additionally exit on spacewalks (extravehicular actions, or EVAs), together with two EVAs deliberate by Russian flight controllers to deploy experiments and U.S.-planned outings to proceed the improve of the station’s photo voltaic arrays and repair the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), a particle physics detector.
“I actually hope that I get to contribute to a spacewalk,” stated Kim whereas answering media questions dwell on NASA’s streaming service. “I believe bodily that is without doubt one of the more durable issues that we get to do, and I’m very excited about bodily and psychological challenges.”
“It is one thing that I, in addition to a number of different astronauts, have labored loads … to arrange for, and so hopefully I can put that coaching to make use of,” he stated.
That Kim, 41, is interested in bodily and psychological challenges speaks to his background as a U.S. Navy SEAL and a medical physician. That is his first spaceflight since being chosen to turn into a NASA astronaut with the agency’s 22nd class of astronauts in 2017.
“I’m seen as possibly distinctive, however I’m with a whole class of wonderful individuals with superb backgrounds. And after I consider my private background, I simply consider myself being in the correct place on the proper time and having alternatives that anybody else would have grabbed in the event that they have been in those self same footwear,” Kim stated in an interview with collectSPACE.com.
Kim is the third SEAL to turn into an astronaut, and all three may have now served on the Worldwide Area Station. William “Invoice” Shepherd led the station’s first expedition crew in 2000, and Chris Cassidy’s second of two long-duration stays concluded simply earlier than the orbiting outpost marked 20 years of steady human occupancy. Kim can be in house for the beginning of the twenty fifth 12 months on Nov. 2, 2025.
“John F. Kennedy, who was liable for initiating our race to the moon, can also be the identical president who commissioned the USA Navy Seals in 1962. It means loads to me to be part of that,” stated Kim. “I actually hope to comply with within the custom that Invoice began and Chris continued.”
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Ryzhikov, 50, is returning for a 3rd keep on the ISS. A pilot within the Russian Air Pressure, he turned a cosmonaut in 2006 after which was a part of the expedition 49/50 and 63/64 station crews. He started this flight having already logged 358 days off the planet.
Zubritsky, 32, is on his first house mission. Chosen to coach as a cosmonaut in 2018, he would be the sixth cosmonaut to function a “particular correspondent” for the Russian state-run information company TASS throughout his time in Earth orbit.
The Soyuz MS-27 crew, led by commander Ryzhikov, is flying beneath the decision signal “Favor.” Their zero-gravity indicator was a small angel holding a horn, and their crew insignia consists of two nods to spaceflight anniversaries: 60 years because the world’s first spacewalk in March 1965, and 50 years because the first joint mission between the U.S. and Russia, the Apollo-Soyuz Take a look at Venture, in July 1975.
“Soyuz is a Russian phrase for ‘union.’ It is also the title of their house car, and I believe it is the proper phrase to explain the collaboration that we have had between our two international locations for a lot of, many a long time, and definitely for your complete existence of the house station,” stated Kim in a media interview. “On the finish of the day, we’re all people doing our components, making an attempt to make this world a greater place.”
Soyuz MS-27 is Russia’s 73rd spacecraft in its class to launch for the station since 2000 and the 156th Soyuz to fly since 1967.
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